The invention relates to a covering from mechanically interconnectable elements.
Wall, ceiling, and floor coverings, such as for example prefabricated parquet, real wood floors or laminate floorings, are made of several rows of predominantly rectangular panels. Conventionally, the panels have continuous grooves on a longitudinal side and a head side, and on the respective opposing longitudinal side or head side, respectively, continuous tongues which form fittingly match the grooves. The panels are installed by joining the groove and tongue, wherein the panels of two neighboring rows are arranged offset to each other.
It is known to provide the grooves and tongues with mechanical locking means which, in neighboring panels in a floor covering, form a latching engagement with one another. This is intended to prevent the formation of gaps in the installed floor through stretching or shrinking processes.
The groove and tongue are provided with mutually matching locking elements in the form of indentations, recesses or projections, to retain connected floor panels in the joined position without the use of adhesives. Normally, the panels are turned or clicked into each other along their longitudinal sides and subsequently shifted sideways, such that locking rails on the head sides engage. To facilitate this, slight hammer strikes can be used in connection with a tapping block. This poses the risk of damage to the panels, even when working most carefully.
Solutions also exist in which the abutting head sides do not have to be locked to one another by hammer strikes, but by slidable tongue elements. An example for this is the floor covering described in DE 20 2007 018 662 U1, in which identically configured panels are locked to one another in vertical and horizontal direction by an essentially vertical and horizontal joining motion, wherein the locking in vertical direction can be caused by at least one spring element which is formed in one piece from the core at a side edge, which in the joining motion snaps behind a locking edge which extends essentially in horizontal direction. The at least one tongue element is free relative to the core in the direction of the top side and in the direction of the opposing side edge and in its side edge connected on at least one of the two ends to the core. It is considered disadvantageous that a horizontal force first has to be exerted on the tongue element to urge the tongue element back, before the built up tension of the tongue discharges and the tongue element snaps behind the locking rail. Similar circumstances exist in the floor panel described in EP 1 350 904 A2, in which the tongue which has to be arranged on a face side of a floor covering element, first has to be pushed back, before it can snap into a receptacle provided for the locking. In any case, a sufficiently great space has to be present behind the tongue, so that the tongue can be pushed back before snapping in.